Monday, July 26, 2004
Conventional Wisdom
Well, we've already had a nice media flap to start the Democratic Convention--Mrs. Kerry telling a reporter to "shove it." It's a gift from the journalistic gods by coming early on the first day, when nothing that matters has happened yet. At least Theresa didn't tell the guy to go fuck himself. Had she uttered an obscenity, the Repug virtuecrats who have been having the fantods since Whoopi Goldberg's riff the other night would likely have gone spasmodic.
One of the big scene-setter stories today is about the GOP's "war room" in Boston, which is intended to shovel out responses to everything the Democrats say at the convention, up to and including comments on the weather. You can bet its products will get a lot of airtime this week--in the name of providing balance, the media will be eager to jump on anything that comes out of it. It'll be up to viewers to decide what's legitimate and what's crap--because nobody else will try very hard.
If you're tuning in for Barack Obama's keynote address tonight, be sure to tune in a little early to hear my representative, Tammy Baldwin, speak on health care. This is her signature issue, and it got her elected to Congress in 1998 even though it seemed like a distinct anachronism after the spectacular failure of the Clinton health care plan. Tammy's pretty impressive--earnest without being cloying, smart without being wonky. Tonight the rest of the country finds out why we like her up here.
John Edwards is reportdly losing his voice on his current campaign swing. More troubling, the Boston Globe reports that Edwards has not been setting the campaign trail alight, apparently. His economic message has been falling flat, and crowds only seem to get energized when he talks about Iraq. That's an interesting shift in only a couple of weeks--the conventional wisdom when Edwards was picked three weeks ago was that his economic message would be his strength--but it's no surprise in the long run. We've all known for two years that the campaign would eventually come down to All Terror, All the Time, and Iraq is part of that.
Recommended Reading: On Best of the Blogs yesterday, Groom Lake suggested that the timing is right for Bush to profit big from the 9/11 commission's recommendations. Although the Repugs' first reaction to the report was to suggest there wouldn't be time to do anything before the election, it's taken only a week for that ship to sail, and now they say they're hard at work. To do nothing now would give Kerry a pretty big club to swing in September and October. After all, they found time to debate gay marriage and flag burning in the last two weeks, neither of which matters a damn. Ergo, we'll probably see a special session of Congress, called to enact some of the commission's suggested reforms, which would give Bush the chance to point to his accomplishments, even though, as Groom recounts, he stonewalled the commission at every opportunity.
Well, we've already had a nice media flap to start the Democratic Convention--Mrs. Kerry telling a reporter to "shove it." It's a gift from the journalistic gods by coming early on the first day, when nothing that matters has happened yet. At least Theresa didn't tell the guy to go fuck himself. Had she uttered an obscenity, the Repug virtuecrats who have been having the fantods since Whoopi Goldberg's riff the other night would likely have gone spasmodic.
One of the big scene-setter stories today is about the GOP's "war room" in Boston, which is intended to shovel out responses to everything the Democrats say at the convention, up to and including comments on the weather. You can bet its products will get a lot of airtime this week--in the name of providing balance, the media will be eager to jump on anything that comes out of it. It'll be up to viewers to decide what's legitimate and what's crap--because nobody else will try very hard.
If you're tuning in for Barack Obama's keynote address tonight, be sure to tune in a little early to hear my representative, Tammy Baldwin, speak on health care. This is her signature issue, and it got her elected to Congress in 1998 even though it seemed like a distinct anachronism after the spectacular failure of the Clinton health care plan. Tammy's pretty impressive--earnest without being cloying, smart without being wonky. Tonight the rest of the country finds out why we like her up here.
John Edwards is reportdly losing his voice on his current campaign swing. More troubling, the Boston Globe reports that Edwards has not been setting the campaign trail alight, apparently. His economic message has been falling flat, and crowds only seem to get energized when he talks about Iraq. That's an interesting shift in only a couple of weeks--the conventional wisdom when Edwards was picked three weeks ago was that his economic message would be his strength--but it's no surprise in the long run. We've all known for two years that the campaign would eventually come down to All Terror, All the Time, and Iraq is part of that.
Recommended Reading: On Best of the Blogs yesterday, Groom Lake suggested that the timing is right for Bush to profit big from the 9/11 commission's recommendations. Although the Repugs' first reaction to the report was to suggest there wouldn't be time to do anything before the election, it's taken only a week for that ship to sail, and now they say they're hard at work. To do nothing now would give Kerry a pretty big club to swing in September and October. After all, they found time to debate gay marriage and flag burning in the last two weeks, neither of which matters a damn. Ergo, we'll probably see a special session of Congress, called to enact some of the commission's suggested reforms, which would give Bush the chance to point to his accomplishments, even though, as Groom recounts, he stonewalled the commission at every opportunity.
